The medicine show visited prospector camps, trade outposts and the fortified monastery of a neo-Dhaic sect I had never heard off. We also stopped at farming collectives, which weren't quite as struggling as the utter dryness of the prairie had indicated elsewhere.

Without any perceivable rhyme to the locations, water pulped from the ground in faint rivulets. Vesija claimed that the ancient canal network, most of it now underground, fed the springs. As long as one knew where to drill, agriculture managed to thrive in Narshur. The main cash crop was saproot, a cultivar that suited the region, as it required little else save plenty of room to take in the Sun. There was a decent profit to be made in that backwater.

Nevertheless, rather contradictorily, free real estate wasn't all that abundant. The Directory officially recognised the land claims of the nomad clans, as long as the owners had accepted citizenship. Even I realised the obvious of mess of conflicting interests. I wouldn't have been much of an intelligencer, if I didn't.

I hadn't forgotten my current vocation, unfortunately. Though it made me queasy to commit such a violation of trust, I searched Vesija's wagon, and I found exactly nothing incriminating. Yet, the chirurgeon involved himself in plenty of unexplained business, which I tried to keep track of. Again, I failed to discover to any indication of sedition. Motsa would have blamed me for deliberate sloppiness. My cousin would be correct to feel pensive about my performance; I had no right to fail the motherland out of personal concerns.

Vesija had carried along classified military intelligence. Such material had only unpleasant uses. My brain budded with a plan. I'd figure out Vesija's scheme and present him with the proof that I knew. If an amateur such as myself could out him, then he was in great danger unless he gave up the game. Afterwards, we could be together in peace. Maybe I might convince him to become an informant for the Commonwealth.

If a faction among the Narshurian clans itched for war, their stereotypical mellow disposition hid beneath rank insanity. The greatest army in the world, and in all the post-Collapse history, served the Jaan Directory. Our navy we only begrudgingly admitted to come as the second in current prominence. Even the Vad plague couldn't stop a dispersed, mobile and thoroughly disciplined army.

With each passing day, which our medicine show spent in frankly inconsequential locales, Motsa's hypothesis that my chirurgeon was part of an unprecedentedly swift courier network grew ever more tenuous. Even so, I decided to continue with my current assignment. Anyone could be nosy, but information gathered remained useless without comprehension. If I gained an in-depth understanding of the situation in Narshur, I would be useful both to the Commonwealth and the people here. A gentler touch might check the destruction cause by our oceanic ambitions.

At first, I needed to know about the Narshurians themselves. Fortunately I had a tutor close at hand.

The night sky radiated implacable cold in its cloudless clarity. Yet the dying winter didn't reach under our shared blanket, as we watched the stars. A fire of piled wagon by-waste hissed, and Nelavi tortured sombre airs out of a fiddle similar to Vesija's.

"Vesija", I murmured into his ear. "You need to teach me your language."

Vesija might have taken the request as prying: something a spy would do. Instead, he smiled wide. "Of course, if you want that." He pulled me tighter against him and hissed a few words in my ear.

I tried my best to translate them word by word: "'Your–– I'm not going to repeat that!"

"Right. I'll have to demonstrate it later." His hand moved on my skin in ways improper among polite company. I glanced at the others. The Utrian Twins appeared fully engrossed in a weird finger wrestling game. Nelavi however, stared at me. It was impossible to gauge her expression through the flames and gloom. I suspected she smiled.

Vesija knew how to utilise the similarities between Jaanish and his mother tongue, which he called Iwunish, to bridge the grammatical gap in the student's mind. Vocabulary stood as the only true barrier, but that could only be gained through use. Once I got a hang of the mangled conjugations, I soon managed to jabber akin to the stilted trade tongue of the more domesticated parts of Narshur.

From the start, it was obvious that I'd never master the pronunciation. Iwunish was much too subtle, as if consciously designed to reveal any non-native speakers.

On the frontier, I had quickly learned that while their the traders spoke a clumsy Jaanish dialect, the clans were dazzlingly disparate in culture, language and appearance alike. That must have been why the continent remained disunited. Even the pseudo-Jaanish-speaking and quite Jaan-looking folk such as Vesija didn't consider themselves to be of the same people, no matter how much the Directory would have preferred that they did. But our nation had faced stiffer resistance than bands of stubborn primitives. Should reason fail to prevail, the conquest had to end in the tranquil grassy vistas stained with blood.

From a distance, Aavjo Fortress appeared a thin-bladed flower growing from a gentle hill. Far from being anything fragile, it was the garrison of a regiment of the Narshurian Auxiliary Skirmisher Legion. According to rumour, the whole unit was little more than a training camp for sharpshooters. The best candidates ended up whisked away to serve in the August Motherland Army proper or our overseas forces.

My brief experience at Aavjo showed the troops to be jolly men of unwholesome character. Their gear was in a shabby state, and few if any embodied the strict Jaan discipline, which had discouraged me from a military career.

As an audience they were loud and vulgar, but not particularly mean-spirited. Once the show was over, I was solicited for further services. After my initial shock, I repelled the advances with the statement that they couldn't afford me. The lecherous soldiers took the rejection with flatteringly good humour; they were quite un-Jaan in that way.

Vesija had acquired a two day permission, which granted him the opportunity to hold a reception inside the palisade as long as he sold no intoxicants. Because the garrison lacked any medical staff beyond their venerable sawbones, the commanding banneret had promised to compensate Vesija for any necessary mundane treatments. It was a splendid deal in terms of business, but I wondered if Vesija had motives beyond monetary.

Nobody sane would have trusted the native auxiliaries as the backbone of Jaan military presence in Narshur. Even beyond concerns of performance on the field, their ilk would be the most sympathetic to any hypothetical insurrection. For Vesija, the medical examination offered an opportunity to exchange secret missives.

Due to his professionalism, I couldn't observe those meetings. Patients' privacy weighed much more than the little untrained assistance I could have provided to the chirurgeon, so I didn't even try to force the case. Fortunately, I didn't lack gainful 'work' of my own. A few flutters of large Jaan eyes and haughty remarks were enough to lure a supposed champion among the skirmishers into wagers of marksmanship.

"Goodness me!" I chirped, when a grinning soldier brought back the target sheets. While the champion's sported a respectably tight spread, mine was as compact as the standard army longarm allowed at the range's distance.

Most of the men around me and my hapless adversary concentrated their gazes on the distance between my brow and navel. The distantly dangerous thrill in that pent-up attention tantalised much beyond the chips I had been sure to win. I said as innocently as I could in my excitement: "The wind must have circled around my line of shots."

"That must be it", my victim muttered. He did have the grace to hand over my winnings without further argument.

"Thank you." I curtsied and turned to smile at the soldiers. "Anyone else want to make sure this I'm not just darned lucky beyond the good fortune of being surrounded by such a fine bunch of incorrigible rogues? It surely can't be that the whole garrison here can be defeated by a mere girl."

My eyes caught a large man leaning out of his wagon. The line to the reception had disappeared, and he beckoned me with a subtle hand gesture.

"Apologies, boys. It seems my responsibilities keep me from playing with you any longer." I waved goodbye to their playful protests and hurried to the chirurgeon.

I sat planted on Vesija's lap, struggling with the mounting discomfort. My trembling legs failed to lift me, yet the large hands kept coaxing moans out of me as if playing his fiddle. Fingers of one hand crept up my ribcage to maul a vulnerable breast. Another palm rested flat against my crotch, rubbing what could no more arise in protest, thus denouncing my capability for useful potency. We both knew that my body was suited only to be transfixed on a solid embodiment of virility.

Only modest groans escaped my lips, though the man strove vigorously to force a continuous melody of satisfaction out of me. Perhaps he wanted the fortress courtyard outside the wagon walls to know his prey was thoroughly satisfied. He might have considered this a punishment for my wanton presence in male company, or only an assurance that such dealings lacked the pressing need to proceed further than innocent coquetry.

The invasion into me remained hard, though fresh 'mucus' coated my insides. "She bleats like in heat", Vesija said in his own tongue. His hand intensified its work to rip another climax out of me; a prospect which seemed only a torturous and ultimately futile prospect at this point.

"You have the wit of a bull", I slurred in broken Iwunish. 'Bull' was what they called the males of the beasts they used in place of carriages. I had seen the creatures a few times now. These reindeers were brutish self-willed things barely suitable for local practice of clinging on their back for transport.

The man jolted his hips hard enough to shift me an inch. The shock of the impact sent my ravaged flesh into involuntary tremor.

"Enough!" I wheezed.

Vesija lifted me up, a feat which still managed to amaze and delight me, and placed my rump next to him on the bed. His gaze caressed my eyes, just as the warmth of his attack ached inside me. He clutched my jaw to guide us into a prolonged kiss.

"I do so love you", he whispered over the thunderous pounding in my ear.

In Jaan parlance, the word 'love' had too much power to be uttered so wantonly. Even if one had the deepest affection for someone, they wouldn't state it outside a suitably solemn occasion: a dear relative on their deathbed; once or twice to inspirit their own child; when infatuation between partners stabilised into lasting attachment.

My throat only managed a squeak of: "What?"

"I said that I love you", Vesija repeated. "To be lost in your eyes; I want nothing more." He said the phrase quick and strained, like a botched delivery on the stage. A man, who would have been comfortable performing in front of hundreds, was nervous talking to me of his affections.

Nothing scrambled out of my mouth. I leaned towards him, which the man rightly interpreted as the command to embrace me. He lowered his back on the bed, and I mounted him a bit like his folk did their riding animals. There, as his precariously positioned master, I pressed my whole body against the warmth of his skin.

"What changes now?" I asked. "Now that you love me."

Vesija's voice hardened: "I want you to stay with me, even if life on the move can get cramped. If, after you have toured Narshur enough, you must return to civilisation, I will come with you."

"You'd leave your homeland. For me."

"All under the stars is home as much as this land." Though grandiose, the tone of his voice implied a lack of conviction.

I had no right to drag him from his roots, even if those were awfully mobile. When Vesija needed to settle down, he'd do it by founding a frontier practice in a small frontier town. There he'd have a wife and children. I couldn't offer him that. He loved to have me at the moment, but that would develop into a hollow fruitless joy.

"Don't worry of me suddenly being eager to leave." I slid off my man and stood up. "We need to hurry, if I'm to be in a serviceable state for that dinner."

Socialites were on short supply at this forlorn outpost of Jaan civilisation. Thus the officers welcomed even travelling entertainers to their late dinner. My pretence of ladyship and Vesija's ostentatious vocabulary must have been the height of sophistication to the rustic soldiery. And we did have suitable attires, even if they were scruffy from the maintenance on the move.

Fortunately we had started my preparations early, as only after two hours I was clad in the orange-black gown and thorough makeup. Vesija utilised his elementary skills as a camp barber on my head, though he added little more than the touch of some acerbic chemical to give a hint of fancy curl to my hair.

"How distressingly beauteous you have to be", he narrated. "One of the officers will undoubtedly challenge me for the right to your hand. I must admit I never was much of a duellist."

"Torment yourself not. I shall avenge you afterwards."

"Let us hope the matter doesn't come to that." Vesija pressed a finger against the roof. A hatch, which I had never noticed, opened, and he took out a small box. "I want to gift you something. For beautification and as a reminder."

A heirloom jewel, I assumed correctly. Dark strips of crystalline alloy hung from the silvery necklace. Though the material was obviously metallic, it had a faint prismatic transparency. My mouth gaped as I stared at the scintillation.

"What is it made from?" I asked.

He shook his head, chuckling much too pleased. "Even the best metallurgist of Poalin lack an answer. The starfarers made the material for their own long forgotten purposes. Now, in this age of oblivion, it only serves to look dazzling."

"Is it poisonous?" Ancient strange-looking objects often were toxic enough that keeping them against bare skin was inadvisable.

"If it was, I wouldn't be here. My maternal ancestors have worn it for generations."

A shiver climbed up my spine and stiffened my ribcage. I needed a moment to form the inner distress into quiet words. "I'd end such a tradition."

Vesija brought the necklace tentatively closer. "Never mind that. I want to see it on you. Try it out this evening."

I let him slip the jewellery on my neck. It had a nice heft, but the thinness of the material kept the jewellery from weighing down my shoulders. The strips fanned over my painted skin, their tips reaching the curve of my bosom. "Kind of you to give the men in there an excuse, should their gaze wander to my chest."

Vesija's eyes snapped back to focus. "Right. Always aim to be considerate."

I pursed my lips. "You shan't be jealous?"

"This is the wrong line of work to resent such eyefuls of approval." He took my hand. "If we go now, we will be late only to a fashionable extend."

Our host the banneret had the whole second floor of the officers' barracks as his quarters. The building was grown to resemble more of a modern mansion than any of the low utilitarian castles usually found in military encampments. An evidently talented silviculturist had even pruned the canopy into soldierly exactitude.

On the inside, the apartment was indeed a fine residence for a martial man of taste, though the actual military utility seemed suspect: the large windows of the second floor were well above the palisade. An artillery barrage would swipe the banneret's collection of antiques clean off the hill. Perhaps cannon wasn't a danger on the prairie; I knew little of soldiering. The view over the austere plain, however, took my breath away. My corset, especially tight for the occasion, couldn't have helped the matter.

The banneret came to greet us personally. His pristine uniform sported non-standard opulent touches, which evoked our aristocratic past: the fabric gleamed with fleshy warmth and a spine-like ribbing went up the back. From his genial and rounded appearance it was difficult to gauge his exact lineage, and so I couldn't know whether his attire indicated a tasteless upstart or a defiant remnant.

He greeted us by name, shook hands with Vesija and gave me a small decorous bow. "Fine shooting down there, madame Nerutaara. I observed the whole demonstration. If only I had ten platoons of men like you, then I could tame these plains for good."

"Thank you." My smile needed a heroic effort in order not to turn awkward. "You flatter me, banneret."

Vesija interrupted the officer's grin with a question: "Is there anything wrong with your current troops?"

"They are as good as can be expected, I suppose." The banneret's broad shoulders shifted with his heavy sigh. "Any of those of proper stock get snapped away from my clutches, so I make do with the lesser material I am left with."

Vesija smiled wide, genuinely enough on the surface, though I had never seen an expression quite like that on him.

The banneret introduced us to his officers and their partners and to the few guests present. I missed the names, because my attention was stuck in one of them.

"Here we have the chief intendant of the local branch of the esteemed Geographic Survey", the banneret said. "Tema Motsa. He is out here to gauge the quality of our auxiliaries at the behest of legate Hiurkko himself."

Motsa's eyes pierced into me. "As a personal favour to the legate, yes." He laughed as if a punch into the face would have been preferable. "It is always interesting to witness the bulwark of our civilisation."

The chiselled dinner table extended across the spacious hall, which allowed my seat to be far from Motsa's honoured place beside our host. The distance disallowed any intimate talk between us. Even thus guarded, the tension upset my stomach. I wasn't able to enjoy the meal, even though there was nothing wrong with the crispiness of the fungal curd. My mind flowed to the office at Tankai, where I had worn the same gown.

When the officers uncorked a bottle of liquor, I tasted bile. Heavy heartbeat filled my chest, and I hurried to excuse myself. Vesija appeared worried enough to depart right away with me, but it wasn't late enough for retreat to be polite yet. I dissuaded him with a whisper of 'lady business'.

In the twisting corridors of the manorial apartment, I found myself lost. It wasn't a huge building, but a maid had to guide me to the guest bathroom. Once behind the safety of a locked door, I leaned on the sink to calm myself.

It was just Motsa, I told myself. A chance encounter. Among the company, I wasn't truly all that vulnerable or exposed. It wasn't in his interests to humiliate me further. Especially when he could be pleased how well I had done my job.

I hurried to the toilet just in time not to make a mess on the chitin mosaic of the floor. Now empty, my abdomen settled in pained squirms. With a moderately calmer mind, I washed my mouth and left the bathroom.

"There you are." Motsa clasped my wrist.

I glanced around the corridor like a trapped animal. But I couldn't risk making scene.

"Come now, cousin." The Jaan man pulled me after him. I offered no resistance. Motsa took me into a bedroom and closed the door after us.

"Here no one shall disturb us." The man was only half a step from pressing into me. His eyes revealed an intensity, which the cavalier smile belied. "So, Lu, what do you have to report?"

"Nothing. My target has done nothing suspicious."

"Is that so? My other sources have confirmed another leak pertaining to the pattern associated with the quack-salver. Something about the movements of our armoured marksmen. Would you happen to know anything of that?"

"No." The lie punched my chest. Jaan couldn't betray the nation. Not even to save their own life. My own ancestors had lived by that creed to their wet and gruesome end. But I compared to their standards in nothing.

"Whatever." Motsa tapped his chin. "It appears you both ride in the same wagon. How have you managed to avoid being exposed?"

"He knows. Not that I'm a spy, but..."

Motsa's smile crept into a vile smirk. "You have slept with the savage."

After a brief pulse of distress, a sense of lassitude overwhelmed me. Shame from something I enjoyed, something which hurt nobody, was all too exhausting to bear this late in the evening. "Yes."

"Fortunate for us then that he has such irregular appetites. Very dedicated work, agent." Motsa grabbed my hand. "Or were you driven by personal desire?" His words had a sharp edge, and there was a glint in his gaze.

"You could have had me", I said in monotone, which poured into a cascade: "Right there in your office. I'd given myself to you. And you wanted that too, but your own preoccupations stopped you. As always." The words lifted my confidence, and I smiled.

Motsa did not lose his smirk, but it no longer had the power to convince anyone of his mirth. Instead of conceding defeat and letting me go, his grip of my fingers tightened.

They would have heard, if I screamed. There would be a row and questions. They'd believe Motsa, of course. He'd say that I had offered myself to him. Why not? The virtue of itinerant women was constantly suspect. Vesija wouldn't believe such accusations of me, but that suspicion itself would end up with him knowing that I was his enemy.

That was what I told myself to explain my silence, but in truth my blood was oil waiting for the spark in Motsa's covetous touch.

The man took a deep breath to calm himself and let go off me. "'Nerutaara' has served our purposes well thus far. Yet, be wary of letting yourself get lost into the role, cousin. Our work serves the Jaan."

"Yes", I whispered.

"I've given you a tremendous opportunity. Your family thinks your are out there in the wilds shooting at rebels and savages. Just the sort of work you were born for. Surely you wouldn't want them to think otherwise? Is that not altogether correct?"

I swallowed with a dry mouth and nodded.

"Perfect." The man stepped back and sighed. He examined me with a sly keenness, which forced my gaze into the immaculate polish of the floor. My reflection ––in spite of the distortion–– showed the image of a dame in splendid evening attire.

I looked back up. "What shall you have Nerutaara do?"

"What you have been doing thus far: distract the enemy courier."

"Which cour–– You mean Vesija."

He only answered with the smug hint of a smile on his lips.

"That's what I am then", I said. "A distraction."

"Exactly. You mustn't fault me for your position, however. It was the best I could do with the material so suddenly thrust on me."

I had been an excess pawn to be flicked at the convenient target in a quick gambit. Motsa failed to see my sour expression, as he had strode away to examine the gaudy decor.

"Continue to keep your savage's attention", Motsa said, more to the Vad artefacts on the shelf than to me. "Though the time is not quite right for the arrests, he has been marked on the list. Sure, we don't have any actual evidence to assure a conviction, but the statistical analysis of enemy intelligence places heavy suspicion on him. In the interest of state security, we may bend the rules. After all, the Directory's scrutiny is so far from here."

The man picked a spindly thing of moulded metal that had caught his eye. "The Narshurian rebel element shall reap the rewards of wilful treason. Such inconsequential cretins are allowed to share the fate of men and women of significantly better breeding." He returned the primordial object to its place and turned to me with grim determination in place of his smiles.

When my mother had mentioned 'the reward for wilful treason' in one of her outbursts against past grievances, the child I hadn't been able to sleep for days. Only after one of my brothers claimed that I had misheard Mum, had I managed to calm down. The traitors were only buried after death in the swamp, he had claimed. I believed him, because I wished to, even though it made no sense to put a respirator on a corpse.

I pushed the old anxieties away to concentrate on the present one. "How soon shall these arrests happen?"

"You need not have the details." He sauntered back to me. "Safe to say, the time of your reappointment shan't be long in coming. Conveniently, the position of my secretary happens to be open."

The man's hands came to rest on my hips. My mind didn't react in order to stop him, for the humours in me warmed with the delusion that Motsa had changed. That he could change. The thumbs rubbed my waist with full implication of what the position as his personal attendant entailed.

Back in Tankai, my strained brain hadn't reconsidered submission to his desires, even at the threat of further indignity. No matter how much my conditioned brain craved it, after the weeks with Vesija, I didn't need my third cousin's approval. I needed to protect my friend, my man, that savage quack-salver. Vesija wasn't an actual rebel. He couldn't be. Based on what I had witnessed, he'd be at worst a very inconsequential lackey.

Motsa's hand moved to my chest and pulled the gown off one side. Fingers like bayonets sunk into the exposed flesh, failing to grasp it all in spite of their spindly length. "I shall write extolling letters to your parents of your performance, while you are busy on your knees."

My breath wavered, as I caressed the front of his trousers. The hidden grenadier jumped to attention under my touch. I pulled the fastener open and whispered in Motsa's ear: "What does that make you, when you know what I am?"

"Damn harlot." Motsa's grasp rose towards my neck, and his hand hit the necklace. Though the alloy strips weren't sharp, one of them bit into his skin. His hold weakened, and I broke free. With a step towards me, the man's trousers fell to his knees. To preserve his dignity, perhaps, he did nothing to stop me, as I left the room.

While I fixed my gown, the maid appeared from behind a corner. Her mouth opened in shock.

I did my best to smile in spite of the circumstances. "The cleavage is a midge too daring, don't you think?"

She had no further comment to offer. I passed her as stately as I was able.

Back in the dinner table, the officers had already popped open a second bottle to fortify their mounting inebriety. I used 'feminine digestion' as an excuse not to partake. Vesija's gaze filled questions, which he kept to himself. He too barely drank.

Motsa never returned. Apparently he had claimed a headache from all the paperwork before coming after me. Once the officers' wives began to trickle out, I and Vesija took our leave.

The walk back to the wagon happened in silence. Only the tight squeeze of my hand voiced out of my anxiety. Once we were inside the cabin, Vesija asked if I was alright.

If I told him the truth, I myself be would added to the endless annals of those fools who hurt their own people out of misguided love.

But that love meant Vesija also deserved my fidelity. He was only a man, and our nation a great one. My deeds were irrelevant in the larger scheme: I couldn't damage the Commonwealth even should I desire it. If there was a lesser evil to choose, it involved Vesija staying dry and breathing.

"They know you are a trai–– spy", I blurted, committing myself to petty treason.

"What are you talking about?"

"You need to run. I was supposed to keep a watch on you, but apparently they had other better sources."

"Wait... You work for the Jaan intelligence?" He swallowed with effort. "This liaison between us..."

"It was all real, at least on my part. I'm not much of an intelli––"

Vesija reached for me. I fully expected him to strangle me right there, yet my self-preservation didn't flare out. I did nothing to stop him, and he hugged me.

"Oh, Neru."

I responded in kind and held my body against his. "You need to go. To your people or better yet across the continent and overseas." With all my willpower, I pushed him off me.

Vesija sniffed, and then to maintain his masculinity, grunted to clear his throat. "I understand. Will you come with me? You must."

Even if Motsa didn't send a pursuit after us, Vesija's best option was to leave behind the spy. We'd treasure the time together, and he might continue on to a more purposeful life, even if it was in exile.

"I need to stay."

"Why?" he asked. My heart leaped at the shred of distrust in Vesija's voice.

My hands rose to his exquisitely draped chest and moved on to his tense shoulders. We shared a long difficult gaze, before Vesija again wrapped his powerful arms around me. It was obvious that he wouldn't relinquish his hold until he had a satisfactory answer.

"I am Jaan", I mumbled. Spurned, Motsa would out me as a traitor, and worse, a public deviant. My family would know of my transgressions. I'd be disowned without kin to call my own. I'd be alone, save for burdening Vesija with nothing to give back.

"Right. I believe I understand." The hold of his arms loosened. "Do you trust me, Neru?"

"We'd be talking over the barrel of my needler otherwise."

The Iwunian recoiled from the remark. I made my best mischievous smirk, which ended up sabotaged by my worried frown. I sighed. "You know that I trust you."

"Then trust me that while I have an agenda, I personally consider it to be in the benefit of both your nation and mine. It involves the Narshurian endemics."

If there had been any hair left at the back of my neck, all would have stood.

"The Vad plague? But you..." Even if I remained wholly loyal to the Commonwealth, this was an opportunity no intelligencer could pass. I nodded.

Vesija's eyes glinted in the gloom, and his arms crushed me against his frame. I yelped only for his lips to assail my open mouth. The kiss lasted long enough to let warm droplets fall on my cheeks. We detached, and I gasped for breath in a theatrical attempt to brighten the mood.

"What's the plagu––"

Vesija rushed to wake up the wagon with a slap at the control nerves. "I'll explain when we have the time. Now, we need to escape out of the reach of Jaan forces."

I tailed him like a helpless shade. "Where are we going?"

"Unless you have objections, the fortress at Lake Hitunna."

"Shall we be safe there?"

"We Narshurians have made a tradition out of sheltering fugitives from our masters." He chuckled. "It remains our prerogative, for now at least."

"But Hitunna? Isn't that at the root of the Pylon? There's a Survey outpost there."

Vesija dismissed my concern with a gesture of his hand. "Only a minor archaeological site. A genuine one, mostly concerned with keeping the independent prospectors from making a mess of the locations we don't guard."

I couldn't come up with a convincing counter-argument. After all, I knew nothing of the wider Survey business. We must have done actual research to go along with the general rapaciousness. "Is Hitunna where your business with the plague is?"

Vesija stopped his frantic preparations to stare at me. "Not quite." He went to the door. "I must tell about our departure to the others. They'll understand, even if we can't share the specifics."

The chirurgeon split the cumulated profits equally between us four. That didn't seem fair, but that wasn't the moment for me to argue about being paid too well. The crew helped to load Vesija's wagon with a few weeks worth of supplies with unquestioning melancholy, possibly guessing the trouble with the authorities.

"We'll circle back to Tankai", Nelavi said. "Do some trading on the way. When will you be there?"

Vesija shrugged. "It might be best if you didn't plan on my return." He pulled me against him to imply our hasty flight involved romance.

"Don't worry about us. We can make do", Dzaki said. Kaala continued: "Even if it means less acrobatics." The Utrian man took the woman's hand. "Do look after yourselves." They both smiled from ear to ear. "You two will be in our hearts." Both of the Utrians hugged me at the same time, before moving on to give the same whimsically warm treatment to Vesija.

Afterwards, Vesija pushed past me into the wagon and went to search through a cabinet. "Speed for our escape." He pulled out a sturdy bottle and hurried out. Soon the wagon grunted and shook enough to rattle the glassware around me. Vesija returned with the bottle empty. "A tonic to put a spring to the wagon's step. We'll have two days, before the creature needs a thorough rest and refill. By then we have disappeared from the face of the domesticated world."

"The gates are locked for the night", I said.

"I've friends here. And what could the Jaan suspect?"

"That we are running from the consequences of doling out substandard medicine." I could only hope Motsa wouldn't do anything, out of same stately arrogance, which had kept him from assaulting me in the guest room.

Vesija pondered a moment, spun on his heels and clambered to the controls. "Fretting does little to help now." He pulled a nerve, which jerked the wagon into an unsteady trot. "Hang onto something. Our ride will be bumpy until the tonic circulates through the wagon's system."

The blast-proof gate loomed against the star-studded sky. While my heart hammered blood through me, I held my breath from the excitement. Vesija didn't slow the wagon down. Before we ended in an embarrassing collision, the gate wobbled into a slow folding motion. As we passed out of the fortress, under the lamp a soldier saluted at us with a grin.

At the base of the fortified hill, the wagon launched into a gallop that rattled the cabin and my teeth alike.

I had severed myself from my past. If, by the unfortunate ebb and flow of fate, Vesija and I were separated, I'd remain unable to return to my life of fruitless indolence. Freedom saturated my soul. Not as in liberation from woe, but as the dreadful sense of a slipping off a cliff with nothing but air between me and the distant ground below. The past offered no tethers to keep me safe. I settled my hands on Vesija's firm shoulders. He had to be the metaphorical ledge to stem my fall.

"Did you ever suspect that I was supposed to spy on you?" I asked.

Vesija laughed, perhaps with the cheer of the hunt in which we were prey. "At one point in Tankai. I dismissed the idea the moment it bubbled off my mind. It was I who sought you out, after all. I'm sorry, my love, but you never gave the impression of a mastermind to conjure a set-up such as that to entrap me."

Suspicion crept up my spine as a frigid shiver. My cousin's schemes must have extended beyond where I could easily understand them.

"Going to Hitunna might be a mistake", I said. "That could be what the Geographic Survey wants you to do. To drive you to your compatriots, or to shake up the wider operation."

"Ah, yes. That Temu gentleman at the dinner was from the Jaan looting and intelligence service. What do they know of me?"

"I didn't tell them anything."

"And I didn't ask that."

"Oh. Well, I myself was told close to nothing. They are aware that you are part of a wide information gathering network. But the extend they suspected is implausible."

"Right. I figure it is."

"And..." If I told Vesija that the Survey knew of the logistics booklet, the Jaan informant involved could be discovered. I'd be his executioner, even if I had never known him. "Vesija. Please, you must believe me that I never told them anything. Not even about the booklet about military logistics."

He turned to look at me. "You know of that?"

"I saw it back in the train. But I don't know, where it's at the moment." A thought flashed through my brain. "If I had to guess, the secret compartment in the ceiling."

Vesija glanced behind him. "I should have burned it now that it has been disseminated."

I thought to ask him about how he had spread it, but my eye caught a glimpse of movement in the back window. "Shut the lights!"

Vesija whistled, and we sunk into darkness. "What is it?"

"We are followed!" I snatched my needler on the way, as I rushed to the back of the cabin. In the small circle of glass, the unforgiving night veiled the world. Starlight glinted on the chitin of the vehicle after us. It wasn't one of the cheap nimble things used by the auxiliary skirmishers, but a heavy yet deceptively fast assault wagon.

The earlier fear for my future had been pleasant excitement compared to the terror that now overwhelmed me. Motsa knew the Old Art in its lethal clarity, free of craven compunctions.

"Neru!" Vesija's howl pulled me into the shaking present.

Few if any extant handheld weapons could pierce the frontal armour of Motsa's vehicle. Fortunately for us, the cabin shielded the bulk of our beast from the rear. The utility of such a design for hasty escapes couldn't have passed Vesija.

"Do exactly as I tell!" I stumbled to the door on the right side of the cabin. "Slow down to a normal speed."

"What? What's out there?"

I swallowed down the impulse to say anything poetic and useless. "It's Motsa. This cabin weighs our beast down, so we can't just outrun his wagon. Now, slow down!"

"Hey!" Vesija's voice strained with incredulity. "Are you planning to fight?" Our wagon slackened its pace.

To let Motsa close enough to disable our vehicle was a risk. That wasn't his style, however. The Jaan man wanted the perfect shot to exemplify his mastery; in his soul he was a warrior aristocrat.

"No. I can't." I unlatched the door, but kept it closed with a hand, and knelt into a tight shooting position. "Move us gently so they may come to our right side."

The chirurgeon yelled an answer, which I couldn't hear over the roar of oceans in my ears.

Our Old Art, in its ancient pure form, wasn't solely the movement of hands and pressure on the trigger. It was neither the sharp eyes of the marksman nor the instincts honed by endless drill, though those we lack not. Ours are techniques, of awareness and the energies of the spirit. The ideal Jaan of the Iridian Age was a holistic weapon, his gun only a part of the machine at the end of a long chain of men and labour. Every nerve in him had to kill with the same callous intent as the needle did. He had no right to do anything else.

My panic washed away, as each full breath took me deeper into total mental absorption, the sharpshooter's ecstasy. When I heard the patter of the assault wagon beside us, my mind had been primed.

"Hard left!" I yelled. My hand let the door swing open and gripped my gun. Majestic in the starlight, Motsa stood in the turret with an elegant tool of death in his arms. I could have killed him.

By necessity, the chitin of the assault wagon had gaps to enable its swift movement. I aimed at a leg joint and pressed the trigger.

As sluggish as a ship on land, Vesija finally reacted to my command. We veered to the side, leaving the stumbling assault wagon behind us.

"Faster!" I yelped. "Faster!"

Our vehicle jolted into a sprint. After three wavering breaths, we had made it to safety.

Glass shattered. The tension left me as a scream. I shivered in place, still crouched. The rear window had broken, but my frantic gaze found Vesija still holding the control nerves.

With an unsteady arm I pulled the door close. I need a few moments more to stand up. In the darkness behind us, the faint reflection of armour chitin rapidly diminished from view. I stumbled to beside Vesija.

"Did we make it?" The harsh voice strained in his throat.

My terror returned. I clawed for a small lamp and opened its valve. The sickly light revealed a hole in the driver's seat and dark stain below the left shoulder of Vesija's shirt. The arm of that side hung limp.

Even Motsa couldn't put a needle into a head through a tiny moving window, shooting from an unsteady vehicle in the dark. At the moment I wasn't glad of my cousin's imperfections.

"Are we... clear?" Vesija asked again.

"Yes!"

The chirurgeon's right hand dropped from the controls. "Help me. Floor." He retained the strength to do most of the work, which was lucky, as I couldn't have dragged him anywhere. Underneath us the wagon continued its mad gallop.

The man's torso stained with the black torrent. I tried to whistle to awaken the lamps with dry lips. Vesija noticed my struggle and let out a thin wheeze that set off the cabin lights. He dropped on the floor with a heavy thud. The exit wound wasn't huge to my untrained eye. Motsa favoured overpowered guns and hardened needles with osmium cores. Those punched through muscle, bone and body armour with ease. I decided to believe the needle had penetrated Vesija without extensive internal damage, even if it had to go through the shoulder blade.

I wasn't unfamiliar with the sight of needle wounds. Usually at this point I would have relieved the insides of my stomach. Only actual difference now was that I had no half-digested food left in me.

Vesija pointed at the cabinets. "Cutter. Remove my shirt. Coagulant... Saturate, both sides. Use the glue to shut the wound."

By the time I had found the supplies, a puddle of blood seeped from below him. A real physician could have done more than such elementary first aid. While I scoured through the clinking cabinets, Vesija lay still with a hand pressed against the wound. His blank moistened eyes stared at the ceiling. I wanted nothing less than that haunted look to remain as my last memory him.

"Here. Stay with me, Vesija."

The cutter whirred through the opulent velvet. After disinfecting my hands, I poured the coagulant into the sanguine fountain and pushed the sticky liquid into the wound. Gradually, the bleeding trickled to a stop. If the coagulant had been the cheap stuff that merely cemented the wound close, I would have only delayed the inevitable. As a physician, Vesija had the best reactive wound-closers that kept the tissue alive, until the flesh healed and the coagulant dissolved. That was according to the theory, and I choose to believe it true.

Though Vesija's eyes had stopped from focusing on anything, he managed to help me turn him on his side. I sealed the entrance wound with the surgery glue and collapsed in the dreadful puddle.

My man wasn't out of danger, but there was nothing I could do. Even had I known how to manage a transfusion, our blood was incompatible without extensive processing.

More as a ritual to calm myself, I cleaned Vesija's shoulder and bandaged it. He was asleep. Asleep, not unconscious, not at the brink of death, not while I watched on helplessly.

I went to pull our vehicle's nerves to slow it to a more steady trot, which was still much faster than a crippled assault wagon should have been able to manage.

Vesija had hoarded a wide variety of medicine into his tiny storage space. Something in those cabinets must have been of use. I browsed through the collection of patent medicine, tonics and antique vials. One tightly sealed bottle caught my eye.

'General Regenerative', the faded label read. Vesija was no quack. He had no fake drugs, even if he sold mere hope if nothing else remained affordable. This little dusty bottle had to be the real thing. Its warnings about the side effects were considerable, but nothing was as bad as chronic existential failure. After reading and re-reading the instructions, I filled a syringe with the dose for Vesija's approximate weight and the severity of his wound.

The syringe needed to be stabbed into the heart of the patient for the best effect. I didn't have the guts for that. Instead, I took care to find the big vein in his left arm. The liquid disappeared into the man, with little immediate effect.

We had spare bedsheets in the floor trunk. Because I lacked the strength to pull Vesija up on the bed without upsetting his wound, I took one pristine sheet and spread it on the floor. Once the chirurgeon had been undressed and cleaned, I dragged him on the sheet. To my relief, not much red stained the white fabric.

Low body temperature killed those nearly exsanguinated, so I piled blankets on the man. The blood had saturated through my gown, ruining both the fabric and colour. I thought to rip the garment off, but that would have been rude to the tailor. Perhaps the gown could be cleansed somehow of Vesija's spilled life.

I scraped the whole attire off me, washed myself and lay beside Vesija to help keep him warm.